Those series have been around for decades and deserve top marks rightfully so. Two Souls games being in the top 5 is complete overkill. The franchises you just mentioned could have their best game be part of the top 5 of any "best games ever" list and no one would bat an eye. Stuff like GTA III / MGS / ALttP / SMW / FF VII was revolutionary for the entire industry.
I adore Demon's Souls and like Dark Souls, but cannot agree on any game not called "Minecraft" being called significant or best of all time that was released in the past 5 years.
Two things: One, many games that were considered fantastic upon release (or still are) haven't aged particularly well, especially compared to modern games. While it's fine to judge a game based off of how it compares to modern games, I don't think it's fair because then most historically great and important games would either not be on a list or would be pretty far down. If somebody wants to make a list with that mindset, it's their prerogative though.
As for the list, you are right in that no list will get universal praise. What differentiates a good list and a bad one is how many issues people have with it and how much importance they place on it. If people were complaining about the same 4 or 5 games, or were saying there are only a few games they missed or disagree with, that's pretty great. But with this list, it's like people are complaining about 80% of it. Not to mention it is supposedly a "modern" list but has Tetris on it (just as an example of the quality of the list).
Two things: One, many games that were considered fantastic upon release (or still are) haven't aged particularly well, especially compared to modern games. While it's fine to judge a game based off of how it compares to modern games, I don't think it's fair because then most historically great and important games would either not be on a list or would be pretty far down. If somebody wants to make a list with that mindset, it's their prerogative though.
Not to mention it is supposedly a "modern" list but has Tetris on it (just as an example of the quality of the list).
Historical importance isn't really interesting or relevant when defining what's "best." If that were done in other mediums, say the Sight & Sound poll, it'd be a bunch of Méliès stuff, a video of Edison electrocuting an elephant and Battleship Potemkin.
So the Top 4 video games of all time was made within the last two years?
What a time to be alive!
/s
DESTINY in the top 50, ALL TIME? Holy fuck.
Meanwhile, these games didn't make it into the top 100....
ctrl + F "Phantasy Star"
ctrl + F "Crysis"
ctrl + F "STALKER"
ctrl + F "Deus Ex"
ctrl + F "System Shock 2"
ctrl + F "Baldur's Gate 2"
ctrl + F "Fallout"
ctrl + F "Monkey Island"
ctrl + F "Gabriel Kinght: Sins of the Fathers"
ctrl + F "Sim City 2000"
ctrl + F "Syndicate"
ctrl + F "Mass Effect"
ctrl + F "Thief"
ctrl + F "Planescape: Torment"
ctrl + F "Arcanum"
ctrl + F "Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines"
ctrl + F "Chrono Trigger"
ctrl + F "Diablo"
Yeah I know, it's ok.And there is nothing wrong with that. Just keep it in mind.
When you title your list "Greatest," it just sounds like a pretentious nonsense frankly. These lists aren't about quality, they're about the games we like the most. There's no real good way to say that Dark Souls is a better game than GTA V. They're also such totally different genres that it's a silly effort to compare them. Also if you don't like certain genres, what does it even matter? And then the further down a list (say 100-70), the lists get even more meaningless. Then the cherry to top it all off is an obvious recency bias. It's simply "which did I like more lately?" In that respect, I'd rather get a writeup A) without numbers, B) separated by genre and C) that excludes anything made within the past 12 months, if not even longer like five years.What else could they be about? That's why I'm so confused by the reaction in these threads.
This too is a problem, because even if we admit that these lists are about personal tastes, I'd still have to question the experience, tastes and intent of someone who put a mess of a list like this together. There are so many holes that you can poke in it, it's not just a few spots here and there.As for the list, you are right in that no list will get universal praise. What differentiates a good list and a bad one is how many issues people have with it and how much importance they place on it. If people were complaining about the same 4 or 5 games, or were saying there are only a few games they missed or disagree with, that's pretty great. But with this list, it's like people are complaining about 80% of it. Not to mention it is supposedly a "modern" list but has Tetris on it (just as an example of the quality of the list).
And they're all incredible films? People had been trying to figure out how to tell a story with the moving image for thirty years before stuff like Sunrise and Potemkin rolled around. Video games are an immature, technologically-bound medium.
Historical importance isn't really interesting or relevant when defining what's "best." If that were done in other mediums, say the Sight & Sound poll, it'd be a bunch of Méliès stuff, a video of Edison electrocuting an elephant and Battleship Potemkin.
And Tetris is timeless, which is why it made the list. I still play the GameBoy version on my 3DS. It's wonderful game design and its abstraction and simplicity have allowed it to age really well. Probably the best puzzle game ever still, slightly ahead of Tetris Attack and Drop 7.
65 - Metroid Prime
64 - Hearthstone
60 - Earthbound
59 - Batman: Arkham Knight
Meanwhile, these games didn't make it into the top 100....
ctrl + F "Phantasy Star"
ctrl + F "Crysis"
ctrl + F "STALKER"
ctrl + F "Deus Ex"
ctrl + F "System Shock 2"
ctrl + F "Baldur's Gate 2"
ctrl + F "Fallout"
ctrl + F "Monkey Island"
ctrl + F "Gabriel Kinght: Sins of the Fathers"
ctrl + F "Sim City 2000"
ctrl + F "Syndicate"
ctrl + F "Mass Effect"
ctrl + F "Thief"
ctrl + F "Planescape: Torment"
ctrl + F "Arcanum"
ctrl + F "Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines"
ctrl + F "Chrono Trigger"
ctrl + F "Diablo"
Film is a technologically-bound medium too, it didn't stop critics from thinking the 100 greatest films of all-time happen in the last fifteen fuckin years. Its not like Pong and Spacewar came out in 2000.
DESTINY in the top 50, ALL TIME? Holy fuck.
Exactly. If Tetris can get mentioned, Super Mario Bros. 1 should be eligible too and would probably rank just as highly.Doesn't choosing a level editor underrate how important and brilliant the actual level design was in the actual games? As amazing as Mario Maker is, it's a toolset... It'd be like rewarding Dragon Quest for gameplay innovation by throwing RPG Maker on a list like this.
I'm actually in favor of this, but I always preferred the gameplay driven FFs. V and XII for LIFE.
Destiny, Bloodborne and Mario Kart 8 are the defining games of this generation. I'd personally have put all three in the top 10.
All 3 in the Top 10 all time? The "defining games" of many previous generations shit mightily on those 3.
they really just fucked up with the random 90s choices. If they just kept to the list was what it REALLY was(the top 100 games from the last 15 years), random "alternative" choices like Drop7 or fuckin Nidhogg wouldn't look too out of place. Instead, you got these few little exceptions like LttP and SM peaking in, and it calls into question everything. Chrono Trigger? Yoshi's Island? DKC2? Planescape Torment? Monkey Island? ANYTHING from the Sega Genesis? Metal Slug? Mega Man? Doom? Countless titles you can recommend today, canonized classics of the medium, don't deserve a spot over fuckin' Limbo and Titanfall? It makes it look like you have no sense of history, like maybe you started gaming in 2005.
if it was a list of the top games of last gen (and this gen so far), it wouldn't be offensive at all.
their top 5 would look like this:
Dark Souls
GTA V
Last of Us
Bloodborne
Galaxy 2
and that's pretty close to my top 5 tbh
instead they had to throw the "greatest of all time" title on there. smh.
Still working on a list and the more I look at it the more I realize that we should just be honest with ourselves. These lists aren't about the "Top 100" but about "My Favorite 100."